Conventional selective call communication systems have employed acknowledge-back pagers to obtain verification of the receipt of sent pages. The acknowledge-back pager has included a low-power transmitter for returning an acknowledgment message in response to a received page intended for, i.e., matching the address of, the pager. The low-power transmitter can also be used for sending messages other than acknowledgment messages. Such "unscheduled" messages can be utilized, for example, to register a traveler's new location or to request delivery of some specific information.
If a pager user of the conventional selective call communication system does not carry the pager along when traveling to another location, messages sent to the pager will be stored in the pager (if turned on) to the maximum extent of the memory of the pager. Unfortunately, the pager user will be unaware of the messages until returning to the location of the pager, at which time some of the messages may have become too old to be of much value. In addition, if the memory of the pager has become filled to capacity at some point in time, all messages received thereafter may have become irretrievably lost.
Thus, what is needed is a method and apparatus for remotely retrieving messages intended for a pager, so that a remote pager user can maintain currency of message reception and further can prevent lost messages due to a full pager memory.